Moving

Today I moved out of my the house I have been living in for 19 years. Its an odd feeling to see the room that you most of your life growing up in empty. As I walked around the house a flood of memories came back from various parts of my child hood. I have so many memories both good and bad here. More good than bad. Part of me will miss it and part of me won't. I know that everything changes. No matter how hard we try to fight everything will change.

I still have a vague memory of driving up to the house for the first time. I remember looking out of the car window at the stone wall fence across the street. As we drove by my parents said "here we are." I remember having a funny feeling as I looked up at the house. I had a funny feeling again this morning as I drove up to the house for what might be the last time. This was a different feeling however. I can't describe but it was strange looking up into what has been my room for the past 19 years and knowing probably would never see it again.

Its strange to think how much has changed in our lives since we moved there. When I moved in I was just starting the first grade. Now I am all grown and on my own. Half the time I spent there I had no idea I had family looking for me. The other half I spent visiting them.

I find the way people deal with change interesting. So many people are afraid and fight it. But change is like a the great river of life. You can try as hard as you want to stop the river or swim against the current but it does no good. You will most likely drown. However I think the thing we forget is that we need change...we demand it. Its a tricky situation however. We change too much and we lose ourselves. We don't change enough and we become board and lazy.

In the end I guess this is a good thing. In order to be our best we need to forget everything we know and start over. so now...I will start over.

Update from Panama

Its been a busy past few weeks. I was in Disney for a week with some family and then I went to Minnesota to see my younger brother’s graduation. I was home for two days then I left for CR.

I arrived in Costa Rica last week and spent a few days with my older sister. She had not started her new job yet so we had time to hang out. We were pretty lazy just watching movies and catching up.

I can't believe her daughter Danny is almost nine. Time really flies. When we first met Eva told everyone that she was pregnant. Its been a lot of fun to watch Danny and every one else grow up over the years.

Monday the 21st I left for Panama.The trip to panama was a little interesting because I missed the morning bus. There is a new bus station since I had been here last and the Taxi driver went to the wrong place. By the time we figured out where the correct place was the bus had already left. The driver was really nice though. We chased after the buss and wait by the side of the road for 30 min hoping we hadn’t missed it. We finally gave up and he took me back to the station to see if there was a later buss.

The taxi driver was nice enough not to charge me for all the time we spent looking for the buss. Lucky there was another bus at 11 so I exchanged my ticket for that one. This bus did not go all the way to David panama where my family lives so my father and sister met me at the board to seek me into the country. :)

The next day was my birthday which our family celebrated by getting me a big cake with a picture of a doll that looks just like me. I spent most of the day watching season 2 of house with my little sister.

The last time I was here was a year ago and its amazing to see how much everything has changed in that time. My little sister isn’t so little anymore. She is 15 and in 11th grade. Soon she will be off to college.

The city of David is also getting bigger. They are building new raod and new housing compolexes. About 6th months ago they moved into a new house. Its really nice and not too far away from there old house.

I really enjoy my time here even if its doing nothing and watching lots of episodes of House. I’ll be here for a couple of more day then its back to Costa Rica.

I was able to do a little video interview with my sister about our blog. Hopefully I’ll have that up soon . I’m also planning on interviewing other family members about there experiences.

Well thats it for now. I'm here for 10 more days then back to the US.

Vacation

I'm going to be on vacation and traveling for the next month so I won't be able to post as much as I have been. However I will be posting on a few key dates that relate to our story. I'm also going to try and do some video interviews with family members. Keep an eye out for those.

Newspaper Picture

The other week I wrote about the time I spent in the orphanage in Honduras. In that post I mentioned that a picture was taken of me that was made it into the newspaper. While we don't have the orginal copy of the newspaper I was able to scan the two photo copies we have.

The funny thing about this picture is that you can tell right away its me. My mom points out even my hair looks the same.

Dufar on Google Maps

Two weeks ago Google and the US Holocaust Museum released an update to Google Earth that highlights the crisis in Darfur.

On the map you can zoom down into the different villages and see which ones have been burned.

I'm really glad to see this kind of thing happening because it makes it harder and harder for Sudan to claim nothing is happening

Technology has a wonder way of making things very transparent.

If you would like more information about the situation in Darfur please look at the Wikiepdia entry and www.savedarfur.org

Memories - by Nelson/Roberto

I'm running as fast as I can. I stop short at the gate fence. In a few quick moves, I jump up, grab the top, swing my legs over and jump down on the other side. I keep running only to be greeted buy the dog. Before he can get near me I duck into the door way to my left. Jumping over some paint cans I turn sharply to the right and hid behind some boxes. I'm out of breath but I try not to make a sound.

I stay here for a minuet. I don't hear anything. Slowly I creep back into the hall way and look around. Poking my head into the next room Ernesto looks up at me and laughs.

"What are you doing?"

"Shhh..she'll hear me" As soon as I say it I hear screaming coming from the next room.

I turn to run again but the stupid dog followed me into the room and is in my way. Great no where to go. I turn, knowing whats coming next.

"I GOT YOU!!" My little sister screams as she grabs my shirt. I try to loosen her grip and tell her she is stretching the shirt. No good. Shes got me and she is NOT letting go.

Giving I pick her up in my arms and we head back to the house to get something to drink.

I often think back to those days when she was a little kid and we would run around the house chasing each other. It was so much fun. I have so many memories.

There is a gate outside of my father's house in panama. The entrance had a nice little ledge just big enough for someone to sit. I use to picker up on my shoulder and put her on the ledge when she was being "bad." She would laugh trying to figure out how to get down.

Then there was the time I broke her bed. I picked up and pretending to be a wrestler dropped her on the bed. It completely fell apart. She was fine but started to cry when she saw her bed in pieces. We were able to fix it right up and minuets later she was grabbing on to my shirt again like nothing every happened.

I'm so glad that I have been able to be a part of her growing up. She is a lot older now and has become a wonderful young lady. I still remember the little girl who ran up to me that first night at the airport. She will always be my little sister.

Meeting my sister and growing up with her has been one of the best parts of this entire experience. I couldn't imagine my life without her.

I know how much she looks up to me and that is where I get so much of my motivation. Her pictures hangs on my wall and I always look it when I am feeling down.

Many families are spread all over the world and don't get to see each other as much as they would like. Thats not an option for me. I'll do whatever it takes to make sure we'll always have memories to look back on.

Virginia Tech Shootings

I thought I would take a sec a reflect on yesterdays events. I know its a little off topic for this blog but at the same time I think its important and its been on my mind.

Last night I was watching news coverage on the events and they had this "expert" from NY talking about how this should have been handled like a terrorist attack. He was saying that the school should have been shut down right away as soon as the first bullets were fired.

That's easy to say now. I'm sure the school responded as they thought was appropriate. I don't think it handling it like a terrorist attack is the right thing to do either. Just look at what happened here in Boston a few months ago with the bomb scare. The city of Boston over reacted and created a huge mess.

My dad was, right Americans need to blame someone. I think blaming the school it to easy. In these situation you can ALWAYS do something better that MIGHT have saved more lives. But really there is no way for the school to know that this guy was going to start shooting people. Its not there fault he went psycho.

If you must blame someone blame this coward to senselessly attacked people and then took the easy way out by killing himself. I can just see it now. There is going to be an investigation into Virgina tech to see what when wrong.

I'm sure the school could have done something a little better but this guy was determined to kill people. He had it planned out. He chained the doors and had spare clips. I mean how do you plan for something like that? You can't and trying to have some plan in place for an event like this isn't going to help either.

What are you going to do have everyone in every school walk through a medal detector? No you train for the worst and pray it never happens. Its a tragedy and its horrible but sadly these things happen and they happen all over the world.

In fact I find it interesting that we as Americans are so upset about this when these things happen everyday in Darfur. If 33 people were killed in a tiny African village would anyone care?

I don't really have a point. I just think the whole thing sucks. Its sad that these thing happen both here and around the world. My heart goes out to the family and students.

One a side not this is a pretty bad week in modern American history. Things that happened this week:

Columbine Shooting - April 20th 1999
Oklahoma Bombing - April 19th, 1995
Woca Texas Fire - April 19th, 1993

I'm not suggesting there is a connection its just interesting that they happened around the same time.